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DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS 



EXPLORATIONS OF THE BOTTOM; 



Ultimate Inalgsts of foumart 3£tt0$rileogc. 



BY A. B. JOHNSON. 



11 Whence and what are we? — 
What means the drama by the world sustained?"' 

COWPKR. 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 
1861. 



INSTlfu- 
SCHOOI 



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THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



BOSTON: 
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 

22, School Street. 



/ 6 & J"? 




CONTENTS. 



L 

Page. 

Man's Triplicity 7 

Triplicity of Human Knowledge 16 

Triplicity of Things Knowable 23 

II. 

The Analysis and Boundaries of Ideas; or, The Cyles of 
the Intellect 28 

III. 

The Predestinate Ideas of the Intellect 32 

IV. 

The Relation of the Three Organisms to each other. . 39 

The Relation of the Emotional Organism to the Physical . . 39 

The Relation of the Intellectual to the Physical 41 

The Relation of the Intellectual to the Emotional 44 

The Two different Organic Powers of the Intellect 47 

V. ? ~ 6 

The Polarity of Intellections 49 

VI. 

What we Think ; How we Think ; What we cannot Think ; 
and the Order in which we Think 58 



4 CONTENTS. 

Chap. I. What we Think; or, The Analysis of Thought. 58 

Visual Thoughts 58 

Verbal Thoughts 58 

Auricular Thoughts 58 

Sapid Thoughts 60 

Nasal Thoughts 61 

Tactile Thoughts 62 

Chap. II. How we Think 63 

Verbal Thoughts 63 

Visual Thoughts 65 

Auricular Thoughts 66 

The remaining Three Classes of Thoughts 67 

Chap. III. What we cannot Think . . 70 

Chap. IV. The Order in which we Think 73 

Thoughts succeed each other in the order that the objects 
thought of became known to us: — 

The Recollections of Words 73 

The Recollection of Sights 76 

The Recollection of Sounds 76 

The Recollection of Tastes, Feels, and Smells 77 

Conclusion 78 



DIAGRAMS. 

Page. 
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, previously to its 

Germination 6 

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with some of 

its Germs and Fruit 15 

Diagram B 20 

Diagram C 27 



DEEP SEA SOUNDINGS. 




THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, 

PREVIOUSLY TO ITS GERMINATION. 



MAN'S TRIPLICITY. 

ll/TAN is intellectual, physical, and emotional, as 
exhibited in the foregoing diagram : hence 
education is divided into physical, intellectual, and 
moral. Physical education relates to all that the 
senses of a man can perceive ; intellectual, to all the 
processes of his intellect ; and moral education, to all 
his emotional feelings. The most illiterate person is 
practically conscious of his triplicity as above ; and 
he will say, " I heard a noise ; I saw a color ; I tasted 
an acid : " and he will discriminate equally well the 
two other senses when he is referring to their informa- 
tion. With like accuracy, he will attribute to his 
emotional organism the feelings which pertain there- 
to, and say, " I feel hopeful ; I feel angry, envious, 
proud, discontented, humble," &c. : and, when he 
speaks of his intellectual processes, he will employ 
words designative of his intellect ; as, " I think I met 
A yesterday; I remember his appearance; I ima- 
gined he did not see me ; I reflected afterwards on the 



8 man's triplicity. 

occurrence ; I judged he was not well ; I conceive lie 
will be sorry ; " &c. A nice distinction exists between 
the words " shall " and " will ; " will relating to the 
emotional organism, and shall to the intellectual. The 
misplacement of these words never occurs to an Eng- 
lishman ; but a common joke attributes the misplace- 
ment to a Frenchman, who, when struggling in the 
water to prevent being drowned, exclaimed to the by- 
standers, " I will drown, and nobody shall help me." 
We often say, a man compliments his heart at the 
expense of his head. Everybody understands that 
the heart denotes the emotional organism ; and the 
head, the intellectual. " My heart is sad, but my head 
is ignorant of any cause therefor," refers to an emo- 
tional depression, and an intellectual ignorance of its 
cause. Should I say, " My head is sad," the assertion 
would not be understood as denoting an emotional 
depression, but a physical pain, or a diseased confu- 
sion of thought. These distinctions in the employ- 
ment of words form no part of literary education ; but 
every man refers as spontaneously to his respective 
three organisms as he refers to his respective physical 
members, and says his feet shall carry him, his hands 
shall support him, his back shall bear the burden, his 
tongue shall speak, he will pour drink down his throat, 
and put meat into his stomach, &c. 

Man's three organisms are recognized further by 
diseases peculiar to each; as, physical, intellectual, and 
moral ; moral being a synonyme of emotional. Idiocy, 



MAN 3 TRIPLICITY. V 

also, is a recognized condition of either a total or par- 
tial absence of the intellect alone, or of the intellect 
and emotions, while the physical organism may be 
perfect. Sleep affects the physical organism more 
than the intellectual, whose actions, under such a con- 
dition of the body, are called " dreams ; " and to these 
the emotional organism responds almost as vividly as 
during physical wakefulness. Old age affects the 
physical and emotional organisms earlier, usually, 
than the intellectual. Alcohol, taken into the stomach, 
affects the emotional organism first, then the physical, 
and last the intellectual. Whether anaesthetics impair 
alike the three organisms, I am not informed. Para- 
lysis may affect all the organisms equally ; or one or 
two may be affected, and the others not ; and the or- 
ganisms which are simultaneously affected may suffer 
in different degrees. The intellect was not involved 
in the curse denounced on man's disobedience. Emo- 
tional sorrow and physical subjection alone were im- 
precated on the woman ; and on the man, emotional 
sorrow and physical labor. 

The triplicity of man impresses itself on our litera- 
ture. Poetry and theology may be termed u the 
literature of our emotional organism ; " philosophy, 
astronomy, mathematics, and law, " the literature of 
our intellect ; " and treatises on trade, manufactures, 
arts, navigation, war, medicine, and surgery, "the 
literature of our physical organism." Men like 
poetry in proportion as their emotional organism 



10 man's triplicity. 

preponderates over their intellectual; they delight 
in philosophy as their intellectual organism pre- 
ponderates over their emotional ; and they delight in 
manual operations as their physical organism prepon- 
derates over their intellectual and emotional parts. 
Our triplicity accounts for a triplication in phraseology 
that is too common to be casual ; as, for instance, our 
forefathers pledged to the success of American inde- 
pendence " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor." Honor was a pledge of their intellect ; for- 
tune was a pledge of their physical possessions ; and 
life typified their emotional organism. In the Epis- 
copal marriage ceremony, the bride promises " to love, 
honor, and obey" the husband. "Love" refers to 
her emotional organism ; " honor " refers to her 
intellectual appreciation of him ; and " obey " refers 
to physical services. The bridegroom pledges, in 
return, his three organisms ; but, instead of physical 
obedience, he promises physical cherishment. Such 
triplications are numerous in the Scriptures ; as, 
" What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
thy God ? " — " To do " refers to physical conduct ; 
" to love " refers to emotional feelings ; and " to walk 
humbly" refers to an intellectual abasement of our- 
selves. Again : " Let not once be named among you, 
neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting." 
"We find, by the context, that " filthiness " means im- 
pure emotions ; " foolish talk " is physical ; and 



' man's triplicity. 11 

" jesting " is intellectual frivolity. Again : " Let 
every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to 
wrath." The first refers to the intellect ; the second 
is physical ; and the third, emotional. The Episcopal 
liturgy deprecates " the world, the flesh, and the 
Devil." The " world," in scriptural metonymy, sig- 
nifies physical possessions ; " the flesh," emotional en- 
ticements ; and " the Devil," intellectual suggestions. 
The expression, " I pray and beseech you," would be 
tautological : but " to pray " addresses the intellect ; 
and " beseech," the emotions. When King Hezekiah 
was informed that he should die, he said, " I beseech 
thee, O Lord ! remember how I have walked before 
thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done 
that which is good in thy sight." Hezekiah's perfect 
heart is his emotional purity; to walk before the 
Lord in truth is intellectual rectitude ; and to do what 
is good is physical rectitude. David said to Jonathan, 
" What have I done ? what is mine iniquity ? and 
what is my sin before thy father, that he seeketh my 
life ? " — " What have I done ? " is physical action ; 
"what is mine iniquity?" is intellectual intention; and 
"what is my sin? " is emotional perversity. So Elka- 
nah said, " Hannah, why weepest thou ? why eatest 
thou not ? and why is thy heart grieved ? " Grieved 
is emotional ; eating is physical action ; and weeping 
denotes intellectual reflections. Man's triplicity may 
also have relation to the thrice-repeated invocations 
that are numerous in the Bible ; as when the Prophet 



12 man's triplicity. 

Elijah stretched himself upon the widow's dead son 
three times, and each time said, " O Lord, my God ! 
I pray thee let this child's soul come unto him again." 
Also when the Lord called Samuel three several 
times, while Samuel was sleeping in the temple ; 
Samuel each time awaking, and supposing he was 
called by Eli. Again : when Azariah sent a captain 
with fifty soldiers to bring Elijah to him, and Elijah 
called down from heaven fire that destroyed the cap- 
tain and his fifty. Then Azariah sent another captain 
with fifty soldiers, and they were destroyed in like 
manner. Then Azariah sent the third time a captain 
with fifty soldiers ; and Elijah submitted, and went 
with them. So, when Elijah was to be taken up alive 
to heaven, he thrice attempted to escape from Elisha, 
&c. ; and the oft-repeated "Alas ! alas! alas !" — 
" Oh ! oh ! oh ! " Possibly, as the globosity of our 
eyes shapes the field of our vision, our triformity 
originates triplicates; as, present, past, and future; 
heaven, earth, and hell ; war, pestilence, and famine ; 
life, death, and immortality ; earth, sea, and air ; be- 
ginning, middle, end, &c. : especially as each of our 
three organisms usually supplies a meaning to one of 
the three terms ; as, in the foregoing, " present " time 
is physical performances ; Ci past " is intellectual recol- 
lections ; and " future " is emotional expectations ; 
— " life " is physical action ; " death " is emotion- 
al extinction; and "immortality" is an intellectual 
conception ; — " heaven " is an intellectual con- 



man's triplicity. 13 

ception; "earth" is physical; and "hell" is emo- 
tional, &c. 

Man's triplicity impairs not his oneness ; the two 
conditions belonging to different organisms. The 
oneness is a conception of the intellect which deems 
the emotions and the physical members as parts of a 
mysterious ego that intellectually thinks, imagines, 
conceives, judges, supposes, guesses, dreams, reckons, 
calculates, recollects ; and emotionally hopes, fears, 
loves, envies, believes, doubts, grieves, covets, dis- 
believes, regrets, hates ; and physically sees, hears, 
feels, tastes, smells, laughs, cries, jumps, walks, 
dances, hops, fights, sleeps, eats, speaks, &c. The 
Scriptures declare that man was created in the like- 
ness of God ; and this is assumed to mean man's 
physical form, though such an assumption is incom- 
patible wdth God's filling all space, and with the 
adaptation of man's physical form to only definite 
purposes. The likeness finds a better solution in 
man's triplicity and God's tri-unity. " No man hath 
seen God at any time," and all his attributes are 
intellections ; as, immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, 
omnipresent, uncaused, uncreated, without beginning 
and without end ; a Being to whom " a thousand 
years are as one day, and one day as a thou- 
sand years ; " and to whom " darkness and night are 
both alike." God the Father is, therefore, all intel- 
lect : but God the Son is physical, being manifested 
in the flesh, — a man born of woman ; eating, drink- 



14 man's triplicity. 

ing ; being crucified, dead, and buried. God the 
Holy Ghost is all emotional. He is the Comforter ; 
producing hope, joy, faith, gladness, and belief in 
the hearts of man. The three are one. 

" And the Lord God took the man, and put him 
into the garden of Eden to dress and keep it." 
This employed his physical nature. His emotional 
nature (his forbearance and self-denial) was also 
exercised : for " the Lord God commanded the man, 
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
freely eat ; but of the tree of good and evil, thou 
shalt not eat of it." Nor was the intellect of Adam 
unemployed : for 6t the Lord God' formed every 
beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and 
brought them to Adam to see what he would call 
them ; and whatsover Adam called every living 
creature, that was the name thereof." Man's intel- 
lect continues this employment ; and his emotions he 
names "love, hope, anger, joy, envy, jealousy, belief, 
faith, unbelief, vanity, pride," &c. His intellections 
he names " thought, memory, idea, recollection, judg- 
ment, knowledge, conception, contemplation, causa- 
tion, effectuation, power, time, number," &c; and to 
his sensible perceptions he has given names innu- 
merable. The following diagram may denote more 
clearly the triple division of our knowledge : — 



MAN S TR1PLIC1TY. 



15 




THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EYIL, 

WITH SOME OF ITS GERMS AND FRUIT. 



16 man's triplicity. 



THE TRIPLICITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 

Possessing three organisms, and deriving through 
them all he knows, man's knowledge is tri-form. 
This might have remained undiscovered, if Pro- 
vidence had not manifested, that specific organic 
defects, as blindness, deafness, and idiocy, occasion 
specific deficiencies of knowledge. All that a man 
sees, tastes, smells, hears, and feels, corporally, con- 
stitutes his physical knowledge ; all he feels emo- 
tionally constitutes his emotional knowledge ; and 
all he knows otherwise is intellectual. If he take 
the wings of the morning, and fly (in thought) to 
the uttermost bounds of the sea, he is still within the 
magic barriers of the intellect, the emotions, and 
the senses ; if he ascend (in thought) to heaven, or 
descend (in thought) to hell, the same barriers are 
around him. He may enlarge the quantity of his 
knowledge by employing his senses in new direc- 
tions, his intellect in new speculations, and his emo- 
tions in new experiences ; but he can gain no new 
kind of knowledge, nor transmute what is intellect- 
ual into physical, or what is physical into intellectual, 
or what is emotional into any thing but emotions. 

The heterogeneity of our knowledge as above, 
and our indiscrimination of the heterogeneity when 
we speak, have ever perplexed speculation, but not 



MAN S TRIPLICITY. 1 < 

our practices ; man's three organisms continuing 
their heterogeneous ministrations uninfluenced by 
our speculations. For instance, Hume's speculative 
denial of power, causation, and effectuation, pre- 
vented not his emotional organism from responding 
fear to any object that possessed power to cause 
danger. The speculative scepticism of Pyrrho oc- 
casioned a foolish tradition, that, to save him from 
physical destruction, he needed friends to forcibly 
remove him from danger : but a far more vigilant 
and authoritative monitor in all such cases was his 
emotional organism ; and it was ever present, and 
incapable of being silenced. The speculations of 
Hume and Pyrrho, being a product of their intel- 
lect, satisfied it; and each philosopher's emotional 
organism responded faiths and belief to the specula- 
tions as logical conclusions, notwithstanding it re- 
sponded fear in all cases of practical danger. This 
evinces that our nature is adapted to both logical 
speculation and physical practice, even when they 
conflict ; and that neither can eradicate the other : 
but, till a man understands the threefold heteroge- 
neity of knowledge, his intellectual speculations be- 
come often logical puzzles. For example, the oneness 
of a man, and his inability to find the oneness phy- 
sically, is a great puzzle till a man knows that the 
oneness is intellectual, and not physical. Man's 
identity through infancy to old age is another puzzle, 
when it is sought physically ; but the mystery ceases 

2 



18 man's triplicity. 

when we know that the identity is not physical, but 
a conception of the intellect. The spirit, also, that 
animated Thomas before his death, and which no 
scrutiny can at any time detect physically, constitutes 
a puzzle till we know that the spirit is a conception 
of the intellect, and not physical. Time is another 
puzzle : our actions, thoughts, feelings, and sensa- 
tions are all successive ; and, in contemplation of 
this organic condition, the intellect conceives time. 
We therefore need not wonder at our inability to 
find time physically ; or that, with an omniscient 
and omnipresent God, " a thousand years are as one 
day, and one day as a thousand years; " or that, at 
the termination of the world, and all the incidents 
from which our intellect conceives time, an angel is 
to stand with one foot on the earth, and another on 
the sea, and, lifting up his hand to heaven, is to 
swear "that there shall be time no longer." 

Our emotional organism, also, is the occasion of 
mysteries. " Man is born to sorrow as sparks to fly 
upwards ; " and he is equally born to believe and 
disbelieve, to hope, fear, love, hate, envy, revenge, 
and to numerous other emotional feelings to which 
our intellect has given names, and which, when 
thus personified, seem like little sprites located in 
the head or heart, but mysteriously undiscoverable 
physically while we are alive, and by dissection 
after death; and for the sufficient reason that they 
are not physical. Properly discriminated into its 



man's triplicity. 19 

organic classes, all our knowledge is free from mys- 
tery, or equally mysterious if we prefer to esteem it 
mysterious : but we add an unnecessary mystery at 
our inability to discover sensibly what is not sensible. 
Human knowledge can be analyzed no further than 
into the organisms to which it pertains ; and all at- 
tempts to delye below or beyond this boundary are 
founded in ignorance of the inconvertibility, into 
each other, of the information yielded by our several 
organisms. 

Chemistry finds that nearly all material substances 
are compounds, and it analyzes them into elements. 
Knowledge, on the contrary, is composed of ele- 
ments, — sights, sounds, tastes, feels, smells, emo- 
tions, and intellections ; and the intellect compounds 
them into ideas, words, phrases, sentences, &c. We 
analyze physical compounds when we would under- 
stand their elementary ingredients ; so we must 
analyze intellectual compounds when we would un- 
derstand their sensible, intellectual, and emotional 
ingredients : and thus only can we relieve ourselves 
from the speculative puzzles like those we have been 
considering, and which arise from deeming sensible 
what is either emotional or intellectual. For further 
information on this analysis, I refer to my two books, 
— " The Meaning of Words analyzed into Words 
and Unverbal Things, and Unverbal Things classi- 
fied into Intellections, Sensations, and Emotions," 
published in New York, by D. Appleton and Co., in 



20 



MAN S TRIPLICITY. 



1854; and "The Physiology of the Senses, or how 
and what we See, Hear, Taste, Feel, and Smell," 
published in the same city, in 1856, by Derby and 
Jackson. 



DIAGRAM B. 




To exhibit, however, a specimen of the analysis 
intended, let us admit that the earth is constantly 
revolving from west to east. The word " revolve ?? 
analyzes (as displayed in Diagram B) into a sight, 



man's tripltcity. 21 

a feel, and an intellection. An artificial globe can 
be made to exhibit the sight revolve and the feel 
revolve : but the earth exhibits only the sight re- 
volve ; and yet your intellect conceives, that were 
you placed (as angels may be) externally of the 
earth, as you are placed externally of the artificial 
globe, you could feel the earth revolve as you feel 
the artificial globe revolve. To this intellectually 
conceived identity of the two revolutions, your emo- 
tional organism may respond with a feeling of belief 
therein exempt from any counter-feeling of unbelief 
or doubt ; • though some persons may have simply a 
feeling of faith that the two revolutions are physical- 
ly identical, while other men may feel doubtful, and 
others may feel unbelief in the physical homogene- 
ity of the two revolutions. Anyway, the analysis 
enables you to contemplate the earth's revolution in 
its organic diversity, relieved from intellectually con- 
ceived identities with other revolutions ; and in no 
science is such an analysis so necessary to allay 
ignorant wonder as in astronomy. 

Now, suppose, by way of proving the physical 
identity of the earth's revolution and the revolution 
of an artificial globe, you adduce any number of con- 
curring sensibly perceived facts, and found thereon 
any number of intellectual conceptions ; yet, as the 
feel revolve must ever remain unfelt in the earth, 
the first analysis remains unaffected, except as your 
new facts, &c, may influence my emotional organism 



22 MAN S TRIPLICITY. 

to believe what otherwise I might not believe. But 
no belief can change physical facts ; the information 
of each of our three organisms being supreme within 
its own intelligence, and each constituting a quasi 
world which is a terra incognita to the other two 
organisms : " around the things of each a great 
gulf is fixed, so that the things of one organism, that 
would pass to another organism, cannot." Finally, 
we may say of human knowledge, as St. Paul says 
of flesh, " All flesh is not the same flesh : but there 
is one kind of flesh of men ; another flesh of beasts ; 
another, of fishes ; another, of birds." So there is 
one kind of knowledge of the senses, another know- 
ledge of the emotions, and another of the intellect : 
but they are all equally our knowledge ; just as 
laughing and crying, sleeping and waking, dreaming 
and acting, living and dying, are all equally our 
humanity. We are, however, so constituted, that 
our sensible perceptions are the most satisfactory 
part of our knowledge, especially those that pertain 
to the corporal sense of feeling. These are literally 
real, substantial, tangible, solid, fixed, and so forth ; 
but, when we know that these words name percep- 
tions of the sense, of feeling, we need not wonder 
that no other sense can yield us information that is 
real, substantial, solid, fixed, &c, any more than we 
need wonder that no sense but tasting can yield us 
the knowledge of sweet and bitter. Still, our emo- 
tional organism responds certainty and confidence in 



man's triplicity. 23 

a greater degree to our corporal feelings than to any 
other parts of our knowledge. This is a psycho- 
logical fact, which our intellect may speculate about, 
but cannot change. 



THE TRIPLICITY OF THINGS KNOWABLE. 

The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, where light 
never penetrates, contains waters inhabited by fish 
that are formed without eyes. A like economy of 
creative power pervades the universe ; aquatic ani- 
mals being formed without feet, and terrestrial 
animals without fins : hence the possession, by man, 
of inlets for three essentially different kinds of know- 
ledge, might alone lead a Cuvier* of some other 
planet to assume that our world includes three differ- 
ent kinds of phenomena, — a sensible world, which 
can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted, but known 
no other way ; an emotional world, that can be felt 
emotionally, but known no other way ; and an intel- 
lectual world, that can be recognized by the intellect 
alone. In contemplating even my own person, my 
senses can only perceive therein all that is sensible ; 
and an anatomist, who should cut my body into 
pieces,- can only increase thereby the number of 
his sensible perceptions. None of the foregoing are 



24 man's triplicity. 

recognized by my emotional organism ; but it recog- 
nizes, in my person, hope, fear, love, hatred, desire, 
envy, rage, expectation, faith, belief, reverence, piety, 
scorn, pride, disdain, avarice, liberality, selfishness, 
patriotism, cheerfulness, despondency, lust, satiety, 
courage, and numerous other feelings to which names 
have been given, and many feelings which have re- 
ceived no name. My intellect recognizes, in my per- 
son, things different from any of the two foregoing. 
It discovers that all my sensible exhibitions are only 
properties, or qualities, of a substratum which the 
senses cannot see, but which constitutes my proper 
physical personality : and, though this personality is 
mortal and perishable, my intellect discovers it to be 
animated by an immortal soul, to which my intellect 
itself belongs, and my emotional feelings ; and that 
the perishable body and imperishable soul make to- 
gether one being, who has always been the same 
person from infancy to old age, in sickness and in 
health, in love and hate, in honor and dishonor, 
sleeping or awake. My intellect discovers also, that 
I, this mysterious unit, bear various relations to my 
Creator, to society, to my neighbor, parents, friends, 
wife, children, servants, country, &c. ; and that to 
each of these relations I owe different duties, which 
require some of my emotional feelings and bodily 
actions to be restrained, some to be stimulated; and 
that, to accomplish these and other purposes, I pos- 
sess a circumscribed power of causation and effectua- 






man's triplicity. 25 

tion ; and that I am only one of a numerous race of 
beings similar to myself, who with other beings, 
animate and inanimate, infinite in number and in 
variety of form and habits, occupy severally a limited 
portion of space, but only for a brief period of time, 
which is momentarily converting a portion of an illi- 
mitable future into present, and the present into an 
illimitable past. 

The three worlds of which I have thus spoken 
are revealed to every man by only his own organisms. 
Through each of his five external senses enter all 
the items of the sensible w-orld that come within the 
purview of the respective senses : hence men who 
inhabit the same locality possess mainly the same 
sensible knowledge. Man's emotional knowledge is 
experienced in common by all persons to a greater 
degree than his sensible knowledge ; for that varies 
with localities, and may vary in different periods of 
time : but his emotional knowledge is unvaried by 
time or place ; and men differ therein from each 
other only in degrees of its intensity, and in the 
frequency with which different individuals indulge 
given emotions. Our intellectual knowledge, like 
our emotional, is common to all men, in all times 
and places, so far as relates to its kind. All men, 
for instance, know power, causation, effectuation, 
quality, place, time, figure, relation, &c. ; but the 
same items or manifestations of power, causation, 
&c, are not known to all men, and are infinite in 



26 man's triplicity. 

number and variety. Diagram C exhibits some of 
the kinds of intellectual knowledge that are common 
to all men. They are thus common, by reason that, 
everywhere and at all periods, circumstances exist 
that excite their conception by the intellect ; just as 
circumstances everywhere exist to excite the emotions 
of hope, fear, love, hate, &c, and to excite the sen- 
sible perceptions of tastes, colors, odors, sounds, &c. 
And as the eye needs no previous instruction to 
perceive colors, or the emotions to feel fear ; so the 
intellect needs no previous instruction to conceive, 
under given circumstances, all the kinds of intellec- 
tions that pertain to its organism. 



MAN S TRIPLICITY. 



27 



DIAGRAM C. 




28 THE ANALYSIS AND 



IL- 

THE ANALYSIS AND BOUNDARIES OF 
IDEAS ; OR, THE CYCLES OF THE IN- 
TELLECT. 

As man can articulate only about forty different ele- 
mentary sounds, the alphabets of all languages are 
necessarily much alike ; but we may well feel sur- 
prise, that these few elementary sounds can be so 
variously combined and modulated as to make the 
several thousand different languages which compose 
human speech. The analysis of all articulate sounds 
into a few elements termed an " alphabet " was accom- 
plished at a time reaching back into fabulous anti- 
quity ; but succeeding ages have been unable to much 
improve the original great achievement. That dif- 
ferent languages should contain similar words is a 
natural consequence of the foregoing considerations, 
without the common assumption of a communication 
between the several nationalities ; and even an occa- 
sional similarity of meaning, in different countries, 
among words similar in sound, is within the compass 
of ordinary casualty, — all men being organized alike 
physically, emotionally, and intellectually ; and hence 
what induced one /people to apply a given name to 



BOUNDARIES OF IDEAS. 29 

any thing may have induced another people. Whe- 
ther language is a human invention or an inculcation 
of God is often mooted ; but God made our hands, 
feet, heart, and lungs so cunningly as to develop 
their own capacity, — and why not our organs of 
speech also ? 

As alphabets teach us indirectly the capacity of 
our organs of speech, so grammars teach us also in- 
directly the capacity of our intellect. By classifying 
all words according to the respective ideas which 
words signify, only, at most, ten essentially different 
kinds of ideas are found. They are called " parts of 
speech," and ordinarily named " articles, nouns, pro- 
nouns, verbs, participles, adjectives, adverbs, preposi- 
tions, conjunctions, and interjections." In neither 
grammars nor alphabets is the analysis merely con- 
ventional ; but the parts of speech are founded in the 
organism of the intellect, and the letters of the alpha- 
bet in our vocal organism : hence the grammars of all 
languages are essentially alike, as are the alphabets. 
Indeed, grammars are more alike than alphabets, — 
some languages containing a few sounds that are not 
of universal utterance, w r hile every language contains 
the same parts of speech, though words are not 
always classified alike therein by grammarians of 
even the same language ; some grammarians making 
as few classes of words as they deem compatible with 
the inculcation of syntax, while other grammarians 
make as many classes as they can find classifiable 



30 THE ANALYSIS AND 

differences in our ideas. But no ingenuity can in- 
vent an articulate sound that alphabets cannot spell, 
nor can it invent a significant idea that the parts of 
speech cannot classify ; and so definitely, that, the 
first time we meet in a sentence any new word, its 
meaning will suggest the part of speech to which it 
belongs, just as the structure of a newly discovered 
plant will suggest the botanical class to which it 
belongs. 

That all ideas are susceptible of such a classifica- 
tion must be consequent upon an organic inability of 
the intellect to think ideas out of the range of the 
parts of speech; or else the limitation is consequent 
upon an absence, in the universe, of any subject out 
of the range of the said parts of speech. Either 
alternative leaves the important and pregnant fact, 
that, how discursive soever may be verbal specula- 
tions and contemplations, our intellect is restrained 
to a given circle of ideas, just as our lungs can inhale 
only certain gases, our stomachs digest only given 
substances, and our hands clutch only objects of a 
given consistency. 

Our intellect is limited not only to the ideas which 
compose the parts of speech, but the ideas are seve- 
rally capable of sustaining only definite characters : 
as, for instance, nouns sustain a difference of gender, 
number, and case ; adjectives, of positive, compara- 
tive, and superlative ; and each of the remaining 
classes of ideas possesses well-defined characters, in 



BOUNDARIES OF IDEAS. 31 

which alone they can act : while the rules of syntax 
are the cycles in which alone our ideas can intelligi- 
bly revolve ; for, even when syntax is violated, the 
violation affects not substantially the sequences of 
ideas to which the rules refer. Grammars, there- 
fore, exhibit the intellect turned inside out, so far at 
least as ideas can be expressed in words ; but the 
intellect will not be satisfied with this outside inspec- 
tion of its inner mysteries, and will fain discover w T hy 
it is thus limited, and especially what constitutes its 
own personality : but, alas ! we possess no means for 
such introspection, except by evolving outwardly 
some more cycles of the intellect, of the same kind 
as the former. If these will satisfy a man, few per- 
sons are so dull as to be unable to make, on the 
subject, some theory satisfactory at least to his own 
intellect, and possibly satisfactory to his own alone. 



32 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 



III. 

THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS OF THE 
INTELLECT. 

When a lighted match is applied to gunpowder, and 
a flash ensues, with an explosion, every person present 
sees the flash and hears the explosion ; his senses 
requiring therefor no preliminary instruction : and 
simultaneously his intellect will, without any previous 
instruction, conceive power and causation in the match, 
and effectuation in the flash and explosion ; the intel- 
lect conceiving thus by its instinct, as the eyes by their 
instinct see the flash, and the ears hear the explosion. 
Accident may regulate what shall transpire momenta- 
tarily within the purview of a man's senses ; but how 
each sense shall be affected thereby is not accidental, 
but predestined by the organism of each sense respec- 
tively. Hence men converse together about their 
common sensible experience, with confidence that the 
senses of all men respond identically. Accident regu- 
lates, in the same degree, what shall transpire within 
the purview of a man's intellect : but how his intellect 
shall be affected thereby is predestined by the organ- 
ism of his intellect, just as the organism of every vege- 



OF THE INTELLECT. 33 

table predestines what it shall extract from the earth ; 
the tobacco plant extracting only what produces 
tobacco, and the plant of corn extracting what pro- 
duces corn. 

The above recital manifests the existence of two 
different principles in the acquisition of knowledge : 
a principle of casualty, which determines what shall 
momentarily come to pass within the purview of a 
man's senses and intellect ; and a principle of fixation, 
which determines what a man's sensible and intellec- 
tual organisms shall respectively respond to what 
comes to pass. A man may every day, during a long 
life, see some object — an elephant, a comet, a plant 
— which he never saw before ; but the visibility which 
is new is only some new arrangement or modification 
of color, light, and shade, which are fixed, predestinate 
impressions produced on every man's eyes by all visi- 
ble objects. Without intending to insist that sight 
can take cognizance of only color, light, and shade, 
I adopt the definition because it answers my design of 
discriminating between the knowledge which is or- 
ganic in the sense of sight, and the knowledge which 
we acquire casually of objects that are visible. The 
like may be repeated of the intellect : its predestinate 
ideas are few, though the number and variety of their 
applications seem illimitable. But we have not ana- 
lyzed into their elements the predestinate ideas of the 
intellect, as we have the predestinate perceptions of 
the eyes into color, light, and shade. What ideas, 



34 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 

then, are predestinate, and which the intellect must 
conceive, and to which its organism is restricted ? A 
preceding essay has shown that they are articles, 
nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, participles, ad- 
verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections ; 
but this classification makes no distinction between 
nouns, &c, that are predestinate, and other nouns, &c, 
that are not predestinate. As, for instance, let us 
assume that the noun " power " is one of the predes- 
tinate ideas which the intellect must conceive, when- 
ever any thing capable of exciting it comes within the 
purview of the intellect : yet, after the idea of power 
has been thus acquired by the intellect, it need not 
know that cold has power to solidify water, and heat 
to evaporate it ; that fire has power to explode gun- 
powder, and gunpowder to rend a rock, &c. These, 
and innumerable other manifestations of power, are 
not predestinate ideas ; but every man is continually 
learning them, casually or otherwise ; and the mani- 
festations thus learned may be different in different 
men : w T hile power itself has ever been known to all 
men alike ; and the same may be said of every other 
of the intellect's predestinate ideas. They are not 
'innate, so as to develop themselves spontaneously; 
but every part of the earth possesses excitants to the 
conception of all the predestinate ideas : and thus is 
preserved the identity of man's intellectual knowledge, 
so far as relates to its kind; just as the identity of 
man's muscular performances is preserved through all 



OF THE INTELLECT. 35 

periods by the identity which exists in man's muscular 
organism, and by a universality of the excitants which 
call the muscles into action. The predestinate ideas 
of the intellect are discriminable, therefore, from the 
casual or experimental ideas, as the fundamental rules 
of algebra are discriminable from the equations and 
problems which the rules evolve, and as the predes- 
tinate movements of man's hands and finders are dis- 
criminable from the paintings and sculptures which the 
predestinate movements evolve. 

But, after we admit that the intellect's conceptions 
are limited in kind to certain fundamental or predes- 
tinate ideas, the limit may be consequent to either the 
organism of the intellect, or to an absence in the sur- 
rounding universe of any things except what the in- 
tellect can take cognizance of. The practical result 
will be alike under either alternative ; and we possess 
no means of deciding between them. Still, the fact 
is interesting, that how much soever physical expe- 
rience, intellectual reflections, and emotional manifes- 
tations, may increase our intellectual knowledge, it 
must all be composed of a limited number of different 
predestinate ingredients : just as our houses, how 
much soever varied in form or structure, must all be 
composed of materials whose variety of kinds is pre- 
destinate and few ; our industry being able usually to 
increase the quantity, but not the kinds. What then, 
in detail, are the predestinate ideas to which our intel- 
lect is- restricted ? My design includes no settlement 



36 THE PREDESTINATE IDEAS 

of the question, but to assert the less debatable propo- 
sition, — that our intellectual speculations are like a 
game of chess, wherein the pieces are limited in num- 
ber and definite in character, while the mode of play- 
ing them may be infinite. The wisest philosopher, 
therefore, like the most skilful chess-player, must still 
employ the same instruments ; and he will differ from 
less wise persons in only the use he will make of the 
common instruments : as, for instance, the cause which 
sustains the world is no longer the shoulders of Atlas ; 
but the intellect, constrained as originally by its or- 
ganism to impute a cause, has conceived, from its pre- 
sent knowledge of casually acquired causes, a better 
cause than Atlas. Light and darkness are no longer 
deemed effects of a revolution of the sun around the 
earth; but the intellect, organically constrained, as 
originally, to deem them effects, has, from its present 
knowledge of casually acquired efficients, selected a 
better efficient. Earthquakes are no longer connected 
with the struggles of imprisoned Titans; but the 
intellect, organically constrained, as in all past time, 
to connect them with some precedent, has frequently 
changed the precedent as its store of casually acquired 
knowledge supplied one that was more satisfactory 
than the others. Problems like the foregoing, in 
which power, causation, effectuation, time, place, re- 
semblance, number, quality, relation, connection, and 
the intellect's other organically predestinate ideas, are 
the staple, have ever engrossed men's speculations ; 



OF THE INTELLECT. 37 

though new answers are continually superseding old 
ones, by reason that man's acquired knowledge is ever 
supplying new analogies : so that every generation of 
men have smiled at the simplicity of the past, and 
some future generation will smile at the best specula- 
tions of the present : and so onwards, world without 
end. 

This view of intellectual speculations w T as taken by 
Aristotle, whose categories were an attempt to ana- 
lyze into a few predestinate ideas all that the intellect 
can conceive ; and now, after the lapse of twenty- 
three hundred years, the chessmen (to continue the 
metaphor) remain unincreased in number and un- 
changed in character. We mav not ao-ree with Aris- 
totle in the number of the intellect's predestinate 
ideas, or in the naming of them ; and, twenty-three 
hundred years hence, these questions will be as un- 
settled as they are at present ; though in relation to 
a limit in the kind of our ideas, and that the varie- 
ties are few, no difference can at any time exist 
among reflective men who will take the trouble of 
analyzing into specifically different ideas any mass 
of intellectual speculations. We often complain that 
novels are but a new adjustment of old topics ; but 
we may make the same complaint of landscapes, 
when we travel : we can see only new combinations, 
and but rarely new components. We may make the 
same complaint of our food : the bills of fare are only 
repetitions of the same materials differently prepared. 



38 PREDESTINATE IDEAS OF THE INTELLECT. 

In short, novelty of ingredients, in any department 
of art or nature, is enjoyed by only the young ; and 
a man need not attain any great age, before he may 
say with Solomon, " The thing that hath been is that 
which shall be, and that which is done is that which 
shall be done ; and there is no new thing under the 
sun," — nothing new, because created ingredients are 
either limited in variety, or our organisms, intellec- 
tual, physical, and emotional, are limited in their 
apprehension. 



RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 39 



IV. 



THE RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS 
TO EACH OTHER. 

Most animals, certainly all the most perfect in forma- 
tion, possess a physical personality, an emotional 
personality, and a quasi-intellectual personality, and 
are thus essentially triune. The physical personality 
includes the corporal senses, which, with other cor- 
poral organs, evince an adaptation to the external 
universe replete with suggestive interest ; but the 
adaptation has been often shown, and my theme is 
only the relation of the three personalities to each 
other. The emotional and intellectual personalities 
of every animal seem subsidiary to the physical per- 
sonality and complements thereof; for they gradually 
subside on the subsidence of the physical powers, 
whose total extinction by death always occasions the 
evanition of both the other organisms ; though occa- 
sionally the physical powers outlive the intellect and 
the emotions. 

The Relation of the Emotional Organism to the 
Physical. 
The relation of the emotional organism to the 
physical is seen in the emotional change produced 



40 RELATION OF OUR THREE OKGANISMS. 

in all male animals by physical emasculation. Ani- 
mals, also, that generate without physical intercourse 
with others of their kind, are devoid of various emo- 
tions discoverable in copulatory animals, and useful 
to their copulatory functions ; just as web-footed 
birds desire immersion in water, and claw-footed birds 
fear immersion. Longevity diminishes the physical 
powers of man, and impairs in an equal degree his 
correlative irascibility, ambition, restlessness, and im- 
patience ; but, wealth being more necessary to the 
feeble than the strong, avarice is rather increased 
than impaired by physical weakness. So subservient, 
indeed, to our physical requirements, are our emo- 
tional cravings, that they are deemed by some phy- 
sicians remedial indications : hence cold water and 
cold air are no longer withheld from fevered patients, 
and inappetency is indulged on the same principle. 
Contrast also the emotions accompanying different 
physical formations. Man requires society ; and so 
controlling thereto are his emotions, that solitary 
confinement is the most cruel of inflictions : but 
beasts of prey are best sustained by roaming singly, 
and they are emotionally solitary. Emotional fear is 
as universal in animals as physical danger : but emo- 
tional courage is restricted to animals that possess 
powers of physical resistance, and usually is propor- 
tioned thereto ; though, when fear cannot secure an 
animal's safety by retreat, courage rises in even the 
most timid, as a last remedy against unavoidable dan- 



RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 41 

ger. Analogous to this is the courage which hunger 
develops, and which augments with increasing neces- 
sity, and diminishes with satiety ; so that lions and 
tigers are occasionally pacific, and timid animals fero- 
cious. The rhinoceros possesses enormous strength 
and aggressive resources ; but, incased within an 
almost impenetrable skin, it needs no defensive cou- 
rage, and is, accordingly, destitute thereof; while a 
wasp, exposed all over to destruction, is so proverb- 
ially irritable, that contact with its petty weapon is 
carefully avoided. 

The Relation of the Intellect to the Physical Organism. 

That man's physical organism is worthless without 
an intellect, is seen experimentally in idiots ; and a 
like defect would produce a like result in all animals. 
In matters within their physical power, they all 
evince intellectual capacity ; but, in matters beyond 
their physical powers, all animals seem equally inca- 
pacitated intellectually. A spider, when pursued, 
will roll his body into the form of a ball, and thus 
elude detection by enemies not acquainted with the 
trick ; and, in playing with a captured mouse, a cat 
will avert her eyes therefrom to encourage an attempt 
to escape, whereby to enjoy a recapture. Birds al- 
lure a pursuer from their nests and their young by 
alighting at some distance therefrom. A coach-horse 
will walk to his stable when he becomes unharnessed, 



42 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 

and, at the proper time, will retake his position be- 
fore the coach ; but, the adjustment of his harness 
being beyond his physical powers, it is to him an 
inextricable mystery, as the periodical migration of 
birds and fish are mysterious to us. From some rat- 
traps an exit would be easy to an animal organized 
to lift a fallen door ; but, should the confined rat see 
you lift the door, the escape thitherward will be 
obvious to him : but how to cause such a means will 
remain as inscrutable to his intellect as it is imprac- 
ticable to his physical powers ; just as a man confined 
within four insurmountable stone walls may see them 
suddenly opened by an earthquake, and the means of 
escape become apparent to him ; but, the production 
of an earthquake being beyond his physical powers, 
its production is an inexplicable mystery to his intel- 
lect. When our Saviour says to the impotent man, 
" Take up thy bed, and walk," the intellect conceives 
curative efficiency in the mandate ; but, a recovery by 
mandate being beyond man's physical powers, the 
effect of the Saviour's mandate is mysterious. I once 
saw a farce enacted, entitled "Harlequin Miller." 
Old men and women were placed in a mill, and, 
after being mysteriously ground, came out young 
and blooming. Gross as is the analogy on which the 
farce is founded, the intellect can conceive no mode 
of rejuvenation but what will be equally monstrous ; 
thus manifesting the impotence of the intellect, except 
in subservency to man's physical powers. When a 



RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 43 

man's leg becomes broken or dislocated, the means 
of relief, being within his physical powers, are within 
the purview of his intellect : but, when a horse breaks 
one of his legs, no reparation is within his physical 
capabilities, except to refrain from resting his limb 
on the earth ; and his intellect conceives that remedy 
alone. A dog, when wounded, is incapable of any 
physical appliance, except with his tongue to lick the 
wound ; and his intellect suggests this process, and can 
conceive no better. "We sometimes think revelation 
might properly have gratified our curiosity by inform- 
ing us how the creation of light followed the fiat, 
" Let there be light ; " how u God formed man of 
the dust of the ground ; " and how " the rib, which 
the Lord God had taken from man, made he a wo- 
man : " but, unless the modes were wnthin our phy- 
sical capabilities, — as we know they are not, — our 
intellect could not have understood the information, 
had it been attempted. By analogizing the unknow- 
able to something within our physical powers, we 
learn all we are capable of knowing ; and this is ac- 
complished in the foregoing cases by the above narra- 
tives : we being accustomed to fashion pottery out of 
clay, as, we are told, Adam was made ; and to fashion 
images out of bone and other materials, as, we are told, 
Eve was formed ; and accustomed " to say to this 
man, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he 
cometh," — as, we are told, light was created. Every 
biblical miracle is made intelligible to us by means 



44 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 

like the foregoing ; as, when our Saviour opened the 
eyes of the blind, " he spat on the ground, and made 
clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the 
blind man with the clay." 

That our physical powers limit our intellect's com- 
prehension, may be further manifested by our intel- 
lect's inability to conceive that two apples added to 
two other apples make either more or less than four 
apples. The inability is only a consequence of the 
physical inability, and hence is not apparent to a 
child or man till he knows experimentally or analo- 
gously the physical inability. Why, on the contrary, 
can the intellect conceive that one drop of quick- 
silver added to another drop will make only one 
drop ? Because such a result is physically attainable. 
Why cannot the intellect conceive that a billiard-ball 
can be both very hot and very cold at the same time ? 
Because we find the combination physically impracti- 
cable. But why can the intellect conceive that the 
same ball can be, at the same time, very hot and very 
black ? Because we find that such a result is physi- 
cally attainable. 

The Relation of the Intellect to the Emotional 
Organism. 

But the intellect is subsidiary to the emotional 
organism as well as to the physical. Our amusive 
literature, and our theories, hypotheses, conjectures, 



RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 45 

guesses, deductions, and inductions, are responses of 
our intellect to our emotional curiosity, inquisitive- 
ness, expectations, hopes, fears, doubts, beliefs, and 
unbeliefs, &c. Theological doctrines are responses 
of the intellect to our emotional piety, superstition, 
reverence, fear, hope, &c. ; and hence theology is as 
old as man. Rage and revenge have always created 
some intellectual system of warfare ; curiosity has 
always supplied an astronomy and cosmogony; the 
desire of life, and the fear of death, have always 
originated some hygiene and therapeutics ; love and 
jealousy, some system of marriage to appropriate par- 
ticular women to particular men : just as dams have 
always been constructed by beavers, nests been built 
by. birds, and burrows made by rabbits. 

But, while our intellect is organized to respond 
thus to our emotions, its responses are changeful; 
they being limited at every period to the physical 
knowledge of the period, — the intellect knowing 
only such agencies as it acquires through the exter- 
nal senses : therefore, before the invention of gun- 
powder, the intellect could not account for earthquakes 
on any theory of explosion ; before the discovery of 
steam-power, it could not account for them on any 
theory of steam-expansion ; before the discovery 
of magnetism, it could not account for tides on 
any theory of lunar attraction ; before the discovery 
of electricity, it could not account for the aurora 
borealis and lightning on any theory of electricity, 



46 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 

&c. The sun, which is first seen in the east, disap- 
pears in the west : and, when curiosity seeks an 
explanation thereof, the intellect can give only two 
intelligible responses, — either the sun moves round 
the earth from east to west, or the earth around the 
sun from west to east ; and simply because our phy- 
sical organism has supplied the intellect with no 
other analogous modus operandi. Possibly at some 
future time, and by some physical experience now 
unknown, the above explanations may be deemed as 
childish as the fabled theory of old, that the earth 
is sustained on the shoulders of Atlas, — a fable only 
noteworthy as manifesting the dependence of our 
intellect on the physical knowledge of the period. 
" How are the dead raised up ? and with what body 
do they come ? " St. Paul's intellect answered these 
questions in the only way they can ever be answered, 
— by some physical experience analogous to the 
questions : " Thou fool ! that which thou sowest is 
/ not quickened, except it die : and thou sowest not the 
body that shall be, but bare grain ; it may chance of 
wheat, or some other grain. But God giveth it a 
body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his 
own body." The more unique, therefore, the subject 
is that our curiosity would investigate, the more 
unanalogous thereto must be our sensible experience, 
and ratably anomalous and wonderful must be the 
theoretical solutions thereof by our intellect : hence 
some of the startling speculations of astronomy may 



RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 4* 

possibly originate in a want of analogy between ter- 
restrial and celestial objects and operations ; and may 
we not reasonably suspect such a diversity, when, by 
assuming the contrary, we prove mathematically that 
the nearest fixed star is so distant, that a cannon-ball 
projected therefrom with the greatest known velocity 
of such a projectile, and moving towards the earth, 
would not reach it in less time than seven millions of 
years ; and that suns probably exist, whose light has 
been travelling towards the earth many millions of 
miles every minute since the creation of the universe, 
and it has not yet arrived ? Subject to a like defect, 
all the intellect's solutions of vital operations, genera- 
tion, sustentation, disease, growth, &c, have been but 
little improved since the earliest ages, and they never 
can improve essentially : therefore physicians no 
longer elaborate remedial theories from physical ana- 
logies, but rely for success on analogies from success- 
ful remedial experiences. 

The Two different Organic Powers of the Intellect. 

Our intellect possesses, therefore, two distinctly 
different powers, which have not been heretofore 
discriminated, — a power responsive to our physical 
organism, and on which is founded all our arts ; and 
a power responsive to our emotional organism, and on 
which is founded all our speculations. Providence 
would hardly have thus organized us, if the responses 



48 RELATION OF OUR THREE ORGANISMS. 

in either branch were merely illusory; though our 
intellect (which includes our judgment) often with- 
holds its full approval of many of the intellect's 
responses to the emotions ; while, on the contrary, 
our emotional organism (which includes the feelings 
of belief and unbelief) yields belief equally to both 
classes of the intellect's responses : hence the expec- 
tations of Rationalists will never be realized, that a 
period will arrive when nothing shall be believed, 
unsanctioned by the judgment. Speculations change 
their form ; but speculation as a process is as per- 
manent as sensible knowledge. We shall, therefore, 
always possess and believe a theology revealing to 
us the everlasting future, a geology revealing to us 
the pre-Adamitic past, and an astronomy which in- 
cludes more wonders of the present time than theo- 
logy and geology yield of the future and the past : 
still, theology, geology, astronomy, and all other 
speculations, must be fashioned at any given time 
by our then physical knowledge ; and thereout our 
speculations cannot wander, any more than our feet 
can wander beyond the boundaries of the earth. 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 49 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 

No blind person can recognize either darkness or 
blackness, though both are ever present to him ; nor 
can the deaf recognize silence. Hence recognition 
requires more than the presence of recognizable 
things ; and this requirement the following postulate 
supplies : namely, every intellection includes the re- 
cognition of a negative as well as a positive ; and the 
two poles must concur to produce in any person an 
intellection. Darkness cannot be recognized by the 
blind ; they knowing only the positive, but not 
the negative, — not darkness : and, if light were as 
unintermitted to us as darkness is to the blind, light 
would be a positive without a negative, and there- 
fore it would be as unrecognized by us as darkness 
is by the blind. We should enjoy all the benefits 
of light as we now enjoy them ; but we could not 
recognize it, by reason of our not knowing what 
not light is, — just as the blind suffer all the in- 
conveniences of darkness, but they cannot recognize 
it. If death were unknown, and immortality were 
the condition of all things, life would be a positive 
without a negative, and therefore unknown to us : 

4 



50 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 

just as a statue is undiscoverable in a block of marble, 
till all the marble is cut from the statue, so as to 
make a negative thereto ; and just as a man's face is 
undiscoverable on a painted canvas, till all but the 
face is negatived by being colored differently from 
the face ; and, the more we contrast the positive and 
negative descriptions, the more distinct becomes the 
face. A sheet of white paper contains various pro- 
files of man and animals ; but they are severally 
indiscoverable till we make a negative to each posi- 
tive by cutting from the paper (or manifesting other- 
ways) the parts of the paper not included in the 
respective profiles. If the atmosphere was not occa- 
sionally agitated into winds, a man might live to old 
age without recognizing the presence of air. The 
facility we experience in detecting fish in water, 
or a bird or an insect amid foliage, is -propor- 
tioned to the contrast in color that exists between 
the object and its surroundings. Writing is legible 
in proportion as the written and unwritten parts 
negative each other : ink and writing - paper are 
good in proportion as they best accomplish these 
purposes. Darkness produces invisibility only as it 
prevents any negative to the enveloped positives ; 
but snow can be recognized almost as distinctly in 
darkness as in light ; both being equally a negative 
to the appearance of snow. Darkness increases the 
visibility of the moon ; for darkness, better than 
light, negatives all that is not moon. Could we see 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 51 

the sun, with, the surrounding light negatived, as we 
see the moon in a dark night, the sun's positivity 
would be enhanced ratably with the negativity. A 
smoked glass produces the result partially ; but, 
while it negatives the sun's surroundings, it im- 
pairs the sun's brightness. The sun shining on 
fire and flame seems to deaden them, but only by 
impairing the surrounding negative. An opposite 
effect is produced on the furniture of a room ; for, 
when shined on by the sun, it will often appear 
covered with dust that was invisible previously, from 
the absence of a negative thereto. A fog produces 
obscuration by obliterating all negatives to the objects 
it envelops ; but this is sometimes partially obviated 
by an increased blackness with which some objects 
tinge an enveloping fog, and to which the untinged 
fog becomes a negative. A surrounding daylight is 
as obscuring to the moon as a surrounding fog : both 
yielding an equally imperfect negative to the moon. 
A telescope transforms the galaxy into separate stars, 
not by merely magnifying them, as is usually alleged 
(for that alone would not effect the intent), but by 
surrounding each with a negative. The common 
spectacles that are worn to correct impaired vision 
act on the same principle ; increasing the negative 
surroundings of an object, rather than magnifying the 
size of the object. 

The omnipresence of God must remain unperceived 
by us, though it may possess more positivity around us 



52 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 

than a noonday sun ; the premised omnipresence per- 
mitting no negative of the positive presence. The 
revolutions of the earth are unfelt by us, how violent 
soever may be the gyrations; no negatives making 
the positives perceptible. If we can suppose a man 
to be on shipboard from his birth, and the ship to be 
unceasingly rocked with any unvariable motion, he 
would be unable to recognize the motion : nor could 
it be manifested to him by any instruction from other 
men differently conditioned, any more than a blind 
man can be instructed to recognize darkness ; the in- 
struction requiring for its removal the knowledge of 
a negative. The pressure of the atmosphere is unfelt 
on our body ; the pressure being uniform and unre- 
mitting, a positive without a negative. Fish can have 
no consciousness of being wet; as our constant im- 
mersion in air renders us unconscious of any effect 
therefrom on our skin. When, however, our cuticle 
is wounded, the air produces thereon a feeling evin- 
cive that our former insensibility was owing to only 
the universality of the air's action on us and the ab- 
sence of a negative. How many positives exist around 
us and within us, that are unrecognizable by reason 
of their unremitted presence and the consequent ab- 
sence of a negative, we possess no means of conjectur- 
ing ; but they may be numerous. 

The polarity of intellections is indicated in every 
language by a responsive verbal negative to almost 
every affirmed positive ; as, light and darkness, sa- 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 53 

pidity and insapidity, colored and uncolored, above 
and below, in and out, hot and cold, light and heavy, 
high and low, soft and hard, long and short, easy and 
uneasy, rough and smooth, straight and crooked, hand- 
some and ugly, &c, &c. ; and in each case the positive 
would be unrecognizable without the negative. Hence 
the common paradoxes, that without pain there would 
be no pleasure ; without disease, no health ; without 
cowardice, no courage ; without poverty, no riches ; 
without pride, no humility ; without vice, no virtue ; 
and, without the existence of an exception, we should 
have no rule, &c. 

Some positives seem to conflict with the foregoing 
doctrine. All visible objects are said to be colored ; 
hence color is a positive without a negative : and 
this should make color unrecognizable, and the word 
" uncolored " meaningless. But " color " is used in a 
sense that makes its universality untrue, white being 
a negative of color ; and other negatives exist, as 
water, and the glair of eggs. Figure and shape are 
said to be attributes of every visible object ; and there- 
fore, being positives without a negative, they should be 
unrecognizable. The premises are, however, untrue, 
as is evinced by the words "shapeless" and "form- 
less," which denote practical negatives to figure and 
shape. Philosophers have long been divided in 
opinion as to the existence of a vacuum ; some affirm- 
ing that the universe is a plenum : but a plenum is 
significant only as the negative of a vacuum, and vice 



54 THE POLARITY OF. INTELLECTIONS. 

versa ; hence, without both, neither is significant. The 
like may be said of externality ; which some philoso- 
phers deny, insisting that all we know is internal of 
our mind : but externality and internality are recipro- 
cal conditions, and neither is significant without the 
other. 

But if we can recognize no positive till we know 
a negative thereto, and vice versa, how can we com- 
mence the acquisition of knowledge ? Nature has 
provided for the occasion ; the normal condition of 
each sense constituting a negative thereto : hence his 
saliva is the natural negative by which an infant will 
recognize a taste in the first drop of his food, and the 
normal temperature of his body is the negative by 
which he will recognize heat and cold. A child born 
in a prison, surrounded by fetor, will, by the forego- 
ing principle, be unconscious of the odor ; for, while 
any fetor continues uniform and incessant, it will con- 
stitute his olfactory negative. A man's normal state 
of health constitutes his negative of pain ; and the 
negative differs in different men : well-formed men 
differ therein from men who are congenitively blind, 
deaf, humpbacked, or deformed in any other manner. 

The foregoing examples may never occur in the 
degree assumed : but the principle they enunciate is 
true ; and any man's normal negative may change 
temporarily or permanently. The operatives in a 
factory, where the clang of machinery is uniform and 
incessant, and the inhabitants of a populous city, and 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 55 

the mother of a group of clamorous children, soon 
deem the accustomed sounds a negative of noise, while 
it would be distracting to persons unaccustomed there- 
to. Men can so familiarize themselves thereto, that 
the taste of tobacco may become a negative ; furnace- 
men may come, by habit, to deem as a negative a de- 
gree of heat insufferable to persons unused thereto ; 
and persons long diseased become unconscious of pains 
that originally were very afflictive. When green 
spectacles are first worn by any person, all objects 
seen therethrough are tinged with green ; but, after 
a certain persistency in such glasses, their color be- 
comes a negative, by which other colors are perceived, 
the same as if the spectacles were made of uncolored 
glass. Men afflicted with strabismus possess a nega- 
tive condition of sight that differs from the negative 
of other men ; but all men recognize objects equally 
well, though with different negatives. 

On the foregoing principles, every man's locality 
is his negative of distance ; and his muscular strength, 
the negative of weakness : all persons are young who 
are younger than himself, and all old who are older. 
By a like standard, he determines who is rich, and 
who poor ; who is short, and who tall ; who is fat, 
and who lean ; who is quick in motion and intel- 
lect, and who slow ; who is witty, and who dull. 
What promotes his health is healthful ; what is pre- 
judicial to him is hurtful; what administers to his 
wants is useful ; what is not serviceable to him is 



56 THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 

useless ; what man cannot bound, he deems bound- 
less ; what he cannot fathom, becomes unfathomable ; 
what he cannot understand, becomes incomprehensi- 
ble ; and what he cannot enumerate, becomes innu- 
merable. In relation to this particular positive, some 
Indian nations cannot number beyond the aggregate 
of their fingers ; and then innumerable commences. 
This probably exaggerated example shows how men 
differ in estimating qualities ; but men's predilections 
and capacities are enough alike to obviate much mis- 
understanding in our intercourse with each other. 
Still, the better we understand the criterion by which 
individuals form their judgments, the less we shall be 
irritated by deviations from uniformity. 

I cannot satisfactorily say more on the polarity of 
intellections ; though I see indistinctly that the as- 
sumed polarity, perhaps a bi-polarity, underlies the 
comparison of adjectives ; underlies also the meta- 
physical necessity, that " a whole must ever be greater 
than a part ; " and underlies the intellect's tendency 
to reject the " golden mean," and to vibrate in medi- 
cal treatment from heating to cooling, from exhausting 
to stimulating, from allopathy to homoeopathy, and to 
vibrate in criminal legislation from the execution 
of criminals with the utmost publicity to their exe- 
cution with the utmost privacy, from the infliction 
of death for slight offences to the abolishment of capi- 
tal punishments for the highest, from democracies in 
government to despotisms, and from despotisms to 



THE POLARITY OF INTELLECTIONS. 57 

licentiousness ; and underlies all disputation, every 
assertion exciting in the person addressed a negative 
response, and every negative exciting a positive ; and 
underlies all the antithesis of literature, as in the Bi- 
ble, " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
end, the first and the last ; " and in Shakspeare, — 

" Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned; 
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell; 
Be thy intents wicked or charitable; " &c, &c. 

I will close the topic of polarity by adverting to 
eternity, infinity, omnipotence, &c. ; of which we 
usually say, that their full meaning is unknown to us. 
And why is it? Because they are severally only 
negatives. We, for instance, know time as a positive, 
but eternity (time without end) we know as only a 
negative of time with an end ; we know space as 
a positive, but infinity (space without bounds) we 
know as only a negative of space with bounds ; 
we know power as a positive, but omnipotence (power 
without limitation) we know as only a negative of 
power with limits. Our knowledge of death is like 
the foregoing ; it consisting mainly of negatives. 
The same may be said of sleep. Nor can we find 
out God to perfection, says the Bible : and the or- 
ganic obstruction consists in polarity, which limits 
our knowledge of God to negatives, as in the above 
example of his omnipotence ; the like obstruction 
applying to all his attributes. 



58 WHAT we think; 



VI. 



WHAT WE THINK, HOW WE THINK, WHAT 
WE CANNOT THINK, AND THE ORDER IN 
WHICH WE THINK. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHAT WE THINK ; OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 

Thoughts are divisible into six kinds, as fol- 
lows : — 

Class 1. — Visual Thoughts. 

If I think of the moon as a sight, it is a visual 
thought. When Hamlet exclaims that he can see his 
father "in his mind's eye," the exclamation refers to 
a visual thought. We can think thus of much that 
we ever saw ; and such thoughts will often be almost 
as vivid as actual vision, others will be indistinct, 
but each will endure only momentarily. Many per- 
sons court sleep by thinking visually of sheep, and 
counting them as they leap successively over a gate 
from one field into another. 

Class 2. — Verbal Thoughts. 

We can talk in thought as distinctly as we talk 
audibly. When the Bible commands us " to com- 



OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 59 

mune with our hearts upon our bed, and be silent/ 5 
we recognize the verbal thinking to which the pre- 
cept refers. Hannah spake thus " in her heart : her 
lips moved, but her voice was not heard." An 
accountant can reckon in verbal thought ; a mathe- 
matician can demonstrate therein a problem ; an 
orator can declaim in the same way ; and a Christian 
can thus pray, or repeat the Decalogue. A French- 
man thinks French words ; a vulgar man, vulgar 
words ; an uneducated man thinks solecisms ; and 
a profane man thinks blasphemy. Indeed, verbal 
thinking needs for its recognition only remarks 
enough to manifest the process referred to. 

Class 3. — Auricular Thoughts. 

We can think of thunder as a word, and it will be 
a verbal thought ; or we can think of it as a sound, 
and it will be an auricular thought. When we listen 
to conversation in a language unknown to us, the 
intonation constitutes what we chiefly recall in 
thought. A musician can recall in auricular thoughts 
the sounds of his accustomed instrument, and the 
sounds will be as distinct to him as in actual hear- 
ing. Written music, such a person reads in auricular 
thoughts as he reads written words in verbal thoughts ; 
a violinist reads the written music as sounds of a 
violin ; an organist, as sounds of an organ ; just as 
Arabic numerals are read by a Frenchman in French 
words, and by an Englishman in English. The ability 



60 WHAT we think; 

to read in auricular thoughts the written notes that 
he sees, enables a musician to judge thereby the 
melody of the tune, about as well as he can by hear- 
ing when the tune is played instrumentally. Mu- 
sicians occupy themselves with music in auricular 
thoughts as importunately as other men occupy 
themselves with words in verbal thoughts. Auricular 
thoughts are, of course, absent in persons void of the 
sense of hearing, as verbal thoughts are absent in a 
mute who has not learned to articulate words. Ver- 
bal thoughts are absent also in infants before they ac- 
quire speech, though they possess auricular thoughts. 
Bell-ringers and chimers think vividly the accus- 
tomed sounds ; and, in mania, the sufferer, in some 
cases, mistakes his auricular thoughts for audibly 
uttered sounds and words. Indeed, every person 
occasionally mistakes for the sound of a bell or a 
clock, &c, some auricular thought thereof which is 
excited in him by surrounding circumstances. 

Class 4. — Sapid Thoughts. 

When we recall in thought the taste of sugar, we 
are thinking a sapid thought. Every time a deaf 
mute thinks of sugar, he probably thinks of it in 
sapid thought. The emotional feelings of disgust 
or delight that accompany any taste, accompany 
usually, in a modified manner, our thought of the 
taste : hence conversation that excites the recollec- 
tion of disgustful tastes is avoided by delicate people, 



OR, THE ANALYSIS OF THOUGHTS. 61 

especially during periods of eating. In some men, 
you can at any time excite nausea by speaking to 
them of Glauber salts. Many persons experience 
a flow of saliva by thinking of lemon-juice ; and a 
like effect is often produced by the recollection of 
some food of which we are particularly fond : and 
from this arises the expression of making a hearer's 
" mouth water " by some narrative of delicacies. 
Phraseology daguerreotypes thus our organic powers, 
and constitutes a common -sense philosophy, that 
merits more consideration than it has received. We 
recall more readily, in sapid thought, the taste of 
sugar, salt, and vinegar, than we can insipid tastes. 
Much, however, depends on cultivation : connois- 
seurs of wines taste distinctions therein unobserved 
by ordinary drinkers, and recall them vividly in 
sapid thoughts. The like may be said of connois- 
seurs of tea ; but, generally, men so habituate them- 
selves to verbal thoughts, that the other classes are 
comparatively indistinct from unfrequency of use. 
A man who is deficient of any sense becomes more 
than ordinarily acute in the senses which he pos- 
sesses, and their sensations are recalled in thought 
with a vividness ratably unusual. 

Class 5. — Nasal Thoughts. 

The odor of a rose most persons can readily recall 
in thought; and I term it a " nasal thought." Laura 
Bridgman is deficient of hearing, seeing, and tasting ; 



62 WHAT WE THINK. 

but her sense of smell remedies remarkably these 
deficiencies, her nasal thoughts possessing great vivid- 
ness. A person who visits a hospital while he is 
under fear of any contagion, will think so vividly, in 
nasal thoughts, of any odors he encountered at the 
hospital, as to complain that he cannot rid himself 
thereof; and hence the employment, in such cases, of 
Camphor, by which the unwelcome nasal thought is 
superseded. From this organic consequence proba- 
bly arises the notion, that the odor of camphor is 
antidotal. That dogs and cats recall in thought 
their sensations, we can hardly doubt, from the 
uneasiness they often exhibit while asleep. Hounds 
who follow game by a scent undiscoverable to men, 
experience, probably, nasal thoughts with a vividness 
unknown to us. 

Class 6. — Tactile Thoughts. 

The foregoing classific names indicate the analysis 
which thoughts are susceptible of: so, when sensa- 
tions of feeling are recollected, I name them " tactile 
thoughts." A sufferer from gout, toothache, or any 
pain, will often think thereof in tactile thoughts, not 
in words. Such thoughts partake moderately of the 
physical painfulness of the original feelings : conse- 
quently, topics that will excite the thoughts are 
avoided by considerate companions of the sick. A 
subsided toothache may be reproduced in a man by 
an inquiry as to his present feelings. Thoughts of 



HOW WE THINK. 63 

every class are vivid in proportion to the acuteness 
of the original sensation. To smooth with our hand 
a piece of velvet, or to pass our hand over a rasp, 
produces feelings which we can recall with much 
vividness ; and the like may be said of any peculiar 
feeling. 

CHAPTER II. 

HOW WE THINK. 

Every thought possesses the characteristic of the 
sense or organ to which the thought pertains. 

§ 1. _ Of Verbal Thoughts. 

" Our Father who art in heaven " must be uttered 
in thought as consecutively as in oral speech ; and all 
verbal thinking is equally consecutive. Indeed, ver- 
bal thoughts are words ( spoken inaudibly ; and in 
most cases we can detect a movement of the tongue 
or the breath, as any person can discover if he will 
pronounce in thought the alphabet When a man 
moves his organs of speech forcibly while thinking 
words, we say he is talking to himself. Men influ- 
enced by any strong passion often articulate their 
thoughts, and think aloud, especially when secluded 
from observation : but the tendency is difficult to 
resist, even in public ; and hence proceed the profane 
colloquies with which enraged people encounter each 
other, and which they usually regret on the subsi- 



64 HOW WE THINK. 

dence of the emotions that caused the outbreak. 
The Emperor of Germany's ambassador endeavored 
to ingratiate himself with the King of Prussia by 
speaking disrespectfully of George the First of Eng- 
land, with whom Prussia was at enmity ; but the 
Queen of Prussia, a daughter of George, was present 
at the conversation, and immediately exclaimed that 
" none but a scoundrel would speak thus of a sove- 
reign person." This was her thought, and anger 
caused her to think aloud ; the normal vigor of the 
intellect being often insufficient to control, in the 
wisest persons, the abnormal impulse of unusual 
emotions. That truth is elicited by wine is a pro- 
verbial admission of the effect of emotional excite- 
ment on verbal thinking ; especially as alcoholic 
drinks, though they greatly affect our emotional and 
physical organisms, leave the intellect measurably 
unimpaired. Early in life, verbal thinking is not 
performed with the slight agency of the organs of 
speech about which we have been speaking ; but 
children think aloud : hence the incessant prattle of 
infants, and their proneness to articulate in sleep. 

Verbal thinking is usually deemed the most mys- 
terious manifestation of our intellect ; but my verbal 
thoughts seem as evidently the production of my 
organs of speech as articulated words, and neither 
more mysterious nor less. A paralysis of the tongue 
impairs verbal thinking as much as it impairs arti- 
culation ; but it leaves other thoughts unimpaired. 



HOW WE THINK. 65 

How an abscission of the tongue would affect verbal 
thinking, I should like to know. Persons slow of 
speech are, I suppose, ratably slow in verbal think- 
ing ; and rapid speech is connected with a ratable 
rapidity of verbal thoughts. How far stammering 
affects verbal thinking, I have never ascertained ; but 
the stammerer can probably think verbally without 
impediment. No man can speak fluently, who adopts 
the adage of thinking twice before he speaks : the 
pre- occupation of his organs of speech by thinking 
will prevent fluency of utterance. A fluent speaker 
must think aloud. We all think fluently. 

§ 2. — Visual Thoughts. 

Sights are remote from the eye that sees them ; 
and equally remote therefrom seem visual thoughts. 
When the moon is recognized in visual thought, its 
position in the heavens is part of the thought. The 
face of an absent friend, when seen in our " mind's 
eye," is seen at a distance from the eye. The mind's 
eye and' the eye of the body seem a modification of 
the same identity. When a person endeavors to 
recall any appearance, he watches his eyes for the 
thought he is endeavoring to excite : he will shut 
his eyes, or cast them towards vacancy, and nicta- 
tions of the eye-lids will be suspended. Morphy, 
who plays blindfolded several games of chess simul- 
taneously, can see distinctly, in visual thought, the 
board and the moves. 

5 






66 HOW WE THINK. 

After looking persistently at any bright object, we 
experience, if we close our eyes, a secondary vision, 
that is analogous to visual thinking. The pheno- 
menon which results from a rather painful pressure 
on the eye is of a similar character; also the gro- 
tesque images which occasionally appear when a 
person closes his eyes, and solicits the representation. 
Ordinary blindness may not impair our power to 
recall former sights, nor even an extirpation of both 
the eyes ; but a paralysis of the organs of sight 
would, I believe, impair visual thinking. Experi- 
ments have never been instituted in the above direc- 
tions, the analysis of thought not being sufficiently 
understood. 

§ 3. — Auricular Thoughts. 

We can hear the hum of fifty persons speaking 
together, or the mingled sound of fifty musical in- 
struments ; and we can think in auricular thought 
whatever we can hear. In this comprehensiveness, 
auricular thinking differs from verbal thinking (which 
is consecutive, word by word) ; the difference of the 
two cases conforming to the powers of the organs 
of speech and hearing. As Hamlet saw his father 
in his mind's eye, he could have heard his father's 
voice in his mind's ear, had he endeavored to recall 
the voice in auricular thought. All of us can thus 
recall thunder, or any other familiar sound ; and the 
agency therein of the sense of hearing is so well 



HOW WE THINK. 67 

recognized, that I have known musicians to listen, 
and enjoin silence, when they were endeavoring to 
recollect a partially forgotten tune. 

§ 4. — The remaining Three Classes of Thoughts. 

The smell of a rose, when recalled in nasal 
thought, is accompanied by an inhalation of air, as 
in the act of smelling ; and, in both processes, at- 
tention is directed to the nasal organ. So sapid 
thoughts are often accompanied by a flow of saliva, 
as in actual tasting. The homely phrase, " He 
smacks his lips in recollection of what he has eaten," 
evinces, that, in thinking, we not only see with our 
mind's eye, hear with our mind's ear, smell with 
our mind's nose, but taste with our mind's palate. 

When any feel is recalled in tactile thought, the 
thought is located where the feel was experienced. 
An indolent woman who arises in the morning, from 
her bed, with a headache, may preserve it through 
the day by continually thinking of it in tactile 
thought ; while a physically active man, who should 
arise with such a pain, would solicit other thoughts, 
and the pain would subside. A surgeon told me, 
that, by the continued application of cotton batting 
to the breast of a woman who feared an incipient 
cancer, she became cured ; though, had she nursed 
the pain by constant thoughts thereof, the result 
might have been different. The only effect of the 



68 HOW WE THINK. 

cotton was to induce a cessation of the injurious 
tactile thoughts. Strengthening plasters, and other 
topical applications, operate beneficially by the same 
means. Whether a woman, who has suffered from a 
cancerous breast, can recall, in tactile thought, the 
cancerous pains after an excision of the breast, I 
should doubt ; but, if they can be thus recalled, their 
location will seem to be where she formerly felt the 
pains. 

The information of our several senses can be re- 
collected by different persons with different degrees 
of facility. A musician may recollect sounds in 
auricular thoughts with more facility than he can 
recall any other species of his sensible knowledge, 
while a painter may recall sights more readily than 
sounds. Verbal thoughts are the only class that we 
systematically cultivate the recollection of; and this 
cultivation commences usually at childhood, and con- 
tinues to the end of our college course. Whether 
we could not beneficially cultivate the recollection 
of other classes of thought, may be worth an ex- 
periment : geometry cultivates, to some extent, visual 
thinking. My memory is more tenacious of sights 
than of any other part of my knowledge ; and much 
that I think of absent persons and places is in visual 
thoughts. To most persons, a recollection by ver- 
bal thoughts is better than any other ; and therefore, 
for the purpose of subsequent communication, a tra- 
veller should, while objects are before him, utter 



HOW WE THINK. 69 

or think verbally of the detail that he wishes to 
remember, and he will subsequently recall in thought 
the words more readily than he can the sights. To 
this principle is owing the advantage of viewing ob- 
jects in company with friends ; the comments made 
to each other being subsequently recallable easily in 
verbal thoughts. While travelling in a stage-coach, 
the late Hannah Adams kept repeating, "Trunk, 
band - box, carpet - bag, and satchel." A person 
asked her if she wanted any thing. She said, 
no ; but she was afraid of forgetting some of her 
baggage if she did not commit to memory the 
words. 

Our physical feelings are less easily recalled in 
thought than our other sensations ; and this provi- 
dential dispensation exposes us to the evil of only 
actual pains, except rarely, and in the mitigated form 
of tactile thoughts. Emotional feelings are renewa- 
ble, but they are not recallable in thought ; nor are 
emotional feelings evanescent, as all thoughts are. 
The same melancholy, or other emotional feeling, 
may pervade a man continuously for many days in 
succession. 



70 WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 

CHAPTER III. 

WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 

The blind know nothing of colors, nor of any other 
sight, and consequently they can think no -visual 
thoughts ; and no man, possessed of vision, can think 
visually of any sight that is visually unknown to him : 
his disability therein is precisely like the disability 
of the blind. This limitation of visual thoughts 
is organic, and of course insurmountable. I once 
heard a gentleman refuse to look at the dead body 
of his friend ; assigning as a reason, that he wished to 
think of his friend as he knew him in life, and not 
as he appeared when dead. Every man understands 
the principle alluded to. With verbal thoughts, the 
person could think of his deceased friend in any 
phrases that language can supply ; but, with visual 
thoughts, he could think of him only as he had seen 
him. Still, unless a man understands the six differ- 
ent manifestations that are confounded under the one 
general name of " thought," he may be puzzled when 
he is told of a blind man who once discoursed accu- 
rately on light and colors. The blind man's thoughts 
thereon were but verbal. A traveller in new and 
distant countries may publish in a book all he wit- 
nessed ; but a reader thereof will acquire therefrom 
only verbal thoughts, while the traveller's thoughts 



WHAT WE CANNOT THIXK. 71 

will be the sights and other revelations that were 
made to him by his senses. 

That a man's sensible knowledge is limited to his 
sensible experience, constitutes the organic barrier 
which hides from us futurity. Verbal thoughts may 
overleap the barrier ; but it is not overleaped sensi- 
bly. If any person believes he can think visually 
what he never saw, let him endeavor to think visu- 
ally of some color that he never saw, and he will find 
himself unable. You can see, in visual thought, an 
angle, a globe, a plain ; but you will be unable to 
thus see some shape which you never saw. The 
limitation imputed thus to visual thoughts pertains to 
all the other classes. You can think, in auricular 
thought, the sound of thunder, of a flute, a drum, the 
neighing of a horse, the bleating of a sheep ; but you 
are unable to think thus of some sound you never 
heard. To make the limitation evident, think of 
some sound that shall differ from any you have heard, 
— not in degree, but in kind, — and you will find 
such thinking impracticable. 

But persons may believe, that by combining what 
our senses have informed us of, or by subtracting 
therefrom, we may, in thought, create a centaur. 
We can think verbally a centaur, and we can think 
visually a man's head, and, in another visual thought, 
a horse's body ; but we cannot form the two sights into 
one visual thought. A man can combine black and 
white in one visual thought, if he has ever seen the 



72 WHAT WE CANNOT THINK. 

two colors in juxtaposition ; but, never having seen 
meridian daylight and midnight darkness in juxtaposi- 
tion, he cannot combine the two in one visual thought. 
Locke says, "We can place two lengths together, and 
think of increased length as resulting from the union ; 
but, if we place together two parcels of snow, we 
cannot think of the aggregation as increasing the 
whiteness." Both results depend on the principle, 
that our thoughts of sensible things conform to sensi- 
ble archetypes. A man cannot bite his own nose off; 
nor can he think the operation, except in words. 

Water and vinegar will fuse into one taste, modi- 
fied by the union ; nor can the two constitute one 
sapid thought, except in the manner they can be 
tasted. On tasting brandy, a person may say he 
will try it mixed with water. Why not test the mix- 
ture in thought ? Because we can think sapidly of 
only the tastes we have experienced. A perfume is 
usually a combination of several odors ; but, how 
familiar soever the separate odors may be to you, the 
perfume can be experienced in nasal thought only 
after you have scented the compound. The instru- 
ments that compose a band, you may have often heard 
separately : but you cannot combine their sounds in 
auricular thought, unless you have heard them toge- 
ther ; nor can you, in auricular thought, resolve the 
compound into its separate sounds, unless you have 
heard them separately. The Bourse at Paris, during 
"high change," resounds with a clamor which no 



THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 73 

previous acquaintance with the human voice would 
enable a man to think in auricular thought ; but, 
having heard the sound, he will thereafter be able to 
recall it. 

Verbal thoughts differ from all the foregoing. 
They are not limited to sentences previously uttered : 
but we can think verbally whatever we can speak ; 
the two processes differing only in audibility. Hence 
we can think, in words, of fifty noonday suns blazing 
together in the heavens, or lying scattered on the 
earth ; of grottoes at the bottom of the sea, and fires 
in the centre of the earth ; and of any other thing that 
language can express. Had we the same control over 
our sensuous thoughts that we have over our verbal 
thoughts, curiosity would no longer compel us to 
travel ; but, wandering only in imagination, fiction 
and reality would glide before us in thought like the 
images of a phantasmagoria, and we would soon lose 
the power of discriminating intellectual creations from 
physical realities. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 

Thoughts succeed each other in the order that the 
objects thought of became known to us. 

§ 1. — The Recollection of Words. 

What letter follows R, in the English alphabet ? 
Every man will immediately name S ; but, if you ask 



74 THE OKDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 

him what letter precedes R, he will usually be unable 
to recollect Q till he has first thought of some letter 
that precedes Q, and then remembers downwards to 
R. So a person, who has learned multiplication by a 
table in which the multiplier is never larger than the 
multiplicand, will not know the sum of nine times 
eight till he has reversed it into eight times nine. 
This difficulty may continue with a man during his 
life ; and it illustrates the order in which we think. 
A child who knows by memory the alphabet will be 
unable to proceed if you stop him in any part, and 
thus break the continuity of his thoughts. He will 
say, you have put him out. We remedy such a break 
by repeating the letter which the child last uttered, 
and thus restoring the continuity. All prompting 
proceeds on this principle. A child, in repeating from 
memory any formula, will pronounce the words rapid- 
ly ; for he knows, that, in a slow utterance, some extra- 
neous thought may intervene, and put him out. 

To learn by rote any series of words, you must 
read or repeat the words till your organs of speech 
become so accustomed to the series, that every word 
of it excites a recollection of its successor. Children 
soon acquire experimentally this mode of committing 
to memory, and also that to repeat audibly the words 
which they desire to remember is more effectual than 
to repeat the words in thought. Before a child can 
add two and two, he must recollect the phrase " two 
and two are four," and so of every other two numbers 



THE ORDER IX WHICH WE THINK. 75 

to the extent of his knowledge of addition ; but, as 
we commence a new series of addition, every time we 
attain the sum of a hundred we are relieved from bur- 
dening our memory beyond every binary permutation 
of figures that can make the sum of a hundred. The 
number of such permutations, in every possible series 
of figures in a single column whose aggregate shall 
not exceed the number of one hundred, is, I believe, 
nine hundred. Whether a table of these permuta- 
tions, to be learned abstractly, by memory, as we 
learn multiplication, would assist the acquisition of 
, addition, I know not. Some accountants can add two 
columns at once ; and I have heard of three columns 
being thus summed up. But, before two columns can 
be thus added, some ninety-nine hundred binary per- 
mutations must be leailied by memory ; while, to add 
three columns, requires, I believe, ninety-nine thou- 
sand nine hundred permutations. The addition of 
two columns together is, therefore, about ten times 
more difficult to learn than the addition of a single 
column. Most people limit their memoriter multipli- 
cation to twelve, both as relates to the multiplier and 
the multiplicand ; but no natural limit exists therein, 
but the capacity of man's memory. A memoriter mul- 
tiplication up to twenty, for both multiplier and mul- 
tiplicand, is easily acquired ; and to add up two 
columns of figures simultaneously is not difficult. 



76 THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 

§ 2. — The Recollection of Sights. 

If I have frequently seen four coaches pass my win- 
dow in succession, the first black, the second red, the 
third yellow, the fourth green, my visual recollection of 
the carriages will present them in the same order; and, 
were I called to testify in a court of justice as to the 
succession of the coaches, the order could be recalled 
in visual thought, with little chance of misplacing the 
sequence. Should a person, however, testify falsely 
of such a sequence, he would be in constant peril of 
forgetting the order to which he had testified ; pos- , 
sessing no monitor thereof but a recollection of his 
previous words. Hence the proverb, that liars should 
have good memories. Witnesses are often embar- 
rassed when counsel will not let them testify to events 
in the order of their occurrence. The narration de- 
sired by the witness may contain much that is irrele- 
vant to the issue on trial ; but it is necessary to his 
recollection of the parts which are relevant. 

§ 3. — The Recollection of Sounds. 

A musician is frequently unable to recollect a tune ; 
but, when another person will commence it, the mu- 
sician can sing the rest without prompting. The 
cuckoo is a bird very common in England, and it 
issues a cry from which the bird's name is derived, — 
" Cook-oo." The cry is easily imitated by the hu- 
man voice ; and whoever is familiar with the cry, will 



THE ORDER IN WHICH WE THINK. 77 

recollect, in auricular thought, the second syllable as 
soon as he hears the first : but, should any person 
utter only the second syllable, it will probably be 
unintelligible to the hearer. The like may be said 
of the " whip-poor-will " of America, or the " katy- 
did." The principle is more than the association of 
ideas ; the first syllable of cuckoo being as much asso- 
ciated with the second as the second is with the first. 
Still the association aids not memory, except in the 
sequence to which the senses are accustomed. 

§ 4. — Tastes, Feels, and Smells 

Are all recollected in the order that our senses have 
manifested to us the originals. The order is inde- 
pendent of the will, and providentially prevents our 
remaining absorbed in the contemplation of any single 
thought ; our thoughts flowing onward unceasingly, 
whereby any painful recollection is soon left behind 
till it is again recalled by some of its antecedents. A 
principle of succession, kindred to the foregoing, 
regulates our muscular recollections or repetitions. 
A person, after having played a tune frequently on 
the piano, will unpremeditatedly move his fingers 
on the correct keys ; but he will be as unable to move 
the keys in a reverse order, till practice has familiar- 
ized him to such moves, as he is to spell his name in 
an inverted order. 



78 CONCLUSION. 



CONCLUSION. 

I designed to end -with a summary of what the fore- 
going pages discuss ; but I find myself unable to 
epitomize what together is little more than a very brief 
epitome of several books heretofore published by me. 
I therefore, in conclusion, only iterate what the title 
promised, — that the contents are explorations into 
the depths of intellectual knowledge by means of an 
ultimate analysis thereof. Our physical possessions, 
though illimitable in variety, are, in their essence, 
unknowable beyond the few elements into which they 
are analyzable ; and the like is true of our intellectual 
possessions. Curiosity desires to delve below, soar 
above, and advance beyond, these mysterious barriers ; 
but the end is unattainable. 

I have devoted an unusually long life to specula- 
tions which the present terminate ; and I claim, that 
they constitute a better intellectual philosophy than 
can be found elsewhere, and more intelligible. This 
may not be saying much ; and succeeding investi- 
gators will, I hope, accomplish more. For no person 
is better assured than I, that an abundant scope exists 
for a fruition of the hope. But I have attained my 
own purpose ; for — 

While some in war and some in trade delight, 
My pleasure is to sit alone, and write. 



INSTITU" THE END. 

JVo 

SCHOOLCE. 



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